<
“What does it mean when our university’s founding values universally condemn injustice but our own administration fails to name it outside of our front gates? How can we see no conflict between our mission as a Jesuit university and collaboration with structures that prey upon racialized bodies with impunity?
We recognize this campaign as a challenge to the neoliberal solidarity that refuses to act beyond hashtags, self-congratulatory New York Times’ headlines, “dialogue” that privileges colonizers, the white supremacy that targets black life in all venues, and the racist Zionism that normalizes and justifies Israel’s violence upon Palestinians. We implore the University to divest now.”
Occupation: Legal Secretary
University: Georgetown University
Organization(s): Georgetown Students for Justice in Palestine, Georgetown Forming a Radically Ethical Endowment (GU F.R.E.E.)
Link: https://gufreeorg.wordpress.com , https://www.linkedin.com/in/eabdelfadeel/
Eman Abdelfadeel is an Afro-Arab Muslim woman committed to anti-racist organizing, a tangible justice for Palestinians and the strengthening of black-Palestinian solidarity.
Abdelfadeel is a recent graduate of Georgetown University. As the chair of Students for Justice in Palestine, she coordinated the annual Israeli Apartheid Week and multiple educational events, surrounding topics like black-Palestinian solidarity, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, faith washing, and the connection between the Israeli Defense Forces and the DC Metropolitan Police.
In September of 2016, Abdelfadeel joined a group of students to disrupt a Georgetown Center for Jewish Civilization panel on Netanyahu’s legacy that was painfully void of any mention of the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and Netanyahu’s racism against Palestinians.
At the Kalmanovitz Initiative Research Conference: “Work, Organize,
Struggle: Student Perspectives” conference in April 2017, Abdelfadeel presented a paper titled “The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) Movement as Faithful Witnessing.” The paper drew upon Maria Lugone’s concept of “faithful witnessing” to unsettle the racial contract in Israel/Palestine.
Abdelfadeel is a cofounder of Georgetown University Forming a Radically Ethical Endowment (GU F.R.E.E). GU F.R.E.E. is a coalition of students, faculty, organizations, and alumni calling upon the University to cease its complicity in state violence by divesting their endowment of companies involved with the private prison industry and companies knowingly and consistently involved in human rights abuses in Occupied Palestine. GU F.R.E.E.’s inaugural year culminated in the University’s historic decision to divest from private prison companies in October 2017.
Today, Abdelfadeel continues to organize against anti-BDS legislation in New York State, and coordinates an interfaith dialogue group in Buffalo, NY.